Keynote Speakers

Neda Atanasoski is Associate Professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Her book, Humanitarian Violence: The U.S. Deployment of Diversity (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), addresses the rise of U.S. humanitarian imperialism that has depended on the racialization of religious difference in places like the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan since the end of the Cold War. Her research and publications have focused on U.S and Eastern European new media and cultural studies, with a focus on the politics of religion and sexuality, postsocialism, human rights and humanitarianism, and war and nationalism.

Begum's research is located within cultural, urban, and feminist geographies. She has received her MA degree in Art History from the University of California Riverside in 2001 and her Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California Los Angeles in 2007. She is currently employed full-time at Amnesty International Turkey as the Campaigns and Activism Coordinator and continues to teach courses on feminist and queer theory at İstanbul Bilgi University.

Naila Kabeer
Professor, London School of Economics, United Kingdom
Title: Selling sexual services in neo-liberal times: a feminist economics perspective

Naila Kabeer is Professor of Gender and International Development at the Gender Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science. She is a feminist economist with over 25 years of experience in the field of development studies. Her main focus is on poverty, labour markets and livelihoods, social protection and citizenship. She is involved in an editorial capacity with Feminist Economics, Development and Change, Third World Quarterly, Gender and Development and the Canadian Journal of Development Studies. She also works with the Women's Rights Programme of the Open Societies Foundations and the Better Works Programme at the ILO. Her most recent publications include 'Organizing women in the informal economy: beyond the weapons of weak' (Zed Press); 'Mainstreaming gender and social protection in the informal economy' (Commonwealth Foundation/Routledge) and 'Can the MDGs provide a pathway to social justice? The challenge of intersecting inequalities' (Institute of Development Studies).

Rauna Kuokkanen
Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Canada
Title: Indigenous Self-Determination: From the Politics of Recognition to Restructuring Relations

Rauna Kuokkanen is Associate Professor of Political Science and Aboriginal Studies at the University of Toronto where she teaches Indigenous politics, rights and global Indigenous movements. Her current research examines Indigenous self-determination and the gendered processes of self-government in Canada, Greenland and Scandinavia. She is the author of Reshaping the University: Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes and the Logic of the Gift (2007) and Boaris dego eana: Eamiálbmogiid diehtu, filosofiijat ja dutkan (English translation: As Old as the Earth: Indigenous Knowledge, Philosophies and Research, 2009). Her most recent publications have appeared in International Feminist Journal of Politics, Human Rights Quarterly, International Journal on Minority and Group Rights and Canadian Journal of Political Science. She is Sámi from Ohcejohka (Utsjoki), Northern Finland.